In Memoriam
by Ellster
Summary: Skye and Elaine are out on a mission together that brings back old ghosts.
1. Chapter 1

_I'm sorry it has been so long, but as tends to happen life got in between._

_If you don't know my stories yet, as always I recommend you read them in chronological order. Specifically, there will be references and spoilers for _Missing, presumed dead _and _Turncoat.

_I also recommend reading ThiessenClocks' _Lock and Load_. Actually I recommend all her stuff, because it's really amazing._

_And lastly also thanks to her for being my wonderfull Beta-reader and kicking my butt._

_I promise there will be more._

* * *

**Chapter one**

"Smells like home," Skye commented as they entered the analysts' floor. After spending almost three weeks on a largely boring mission in rural Switzerland, she and Benji had opted to take the long way back to the states. It had even worked until Brandt's message had reached them in Jamaica two days earlier, calling them back to D.C.

Now she was back for the first time in a month, the combined smell of coffee, varieties of tea, stress and a hint of floor polish that was inherent to the IMF's office tract felt almost comfortingly familiar.

"Enjoyed your vacation?"

The agents turned around and spotted Brandt leaning in the doorway of the small kitchen. He was holding a mug in one hand and questioningly waving the half empty coffee pot at them with the other.

"Quite a lot, actually," Benji replied cheerfully and nodded his agreement regarding the coffee. "Yes, please."

"Ethan and Luther are waiting for you in conference room 3. They can fill you in on Brussels while I debrief Skye and Elaine," the analyst continued, filling up two more mugs. "But take your time, it looks like Elaine is running late."

"Late?" Skye asked, accepting the mug of steaming hot coffee. Despite her erratic work times, Elaine Bray usually was almost obsessively early for mission briefings.

Brandt checked his watch. "Probably she's giving the rookies a hard time again."

Benji almost choked on his coffee. "Wait," he said with a half-cough. "She's teaching?"

The corners of Brandt's mouth twitched upwards. "It was Lee's idea," he explained. "Because she decided, rightly so I guess, that Elaine should have some more recuperation time after what happened in February. Only once she was cleared for training, of course, she threw herself right back in, so that required a compromise."

"I take it it's not going very well?" Skye asked.

"Oh, it is, actually," Brandt replied and quickly hid his smile behind the coffee mug when he spotted the person walking down the corridor. Then he waved Skye into his office.

When Elaine joined them a moment later, she nodded a greeting at Skye but remained standing beside the door after closing it. "Please, tell me this is not a social gathering?"

"You have a mission," Brandt replied with a perfect poker-face. Wordlessly he pushed a coffee mug across the table.

"Thank god," Elaine sighed and dropped into the chair next to Agent Holt.

Skye took a moment to look at her. Not having seen the other woman in weeks, she had simply assumed Elaine would have had her hair cut by now, instead it was falling onto her shoulders, throwing unruly waves over the hood of her dark blue sweater. The rest was still very much Elaine, but the view was so unexpected Skye wasn't sure she would have immediately recognized her on her own.

There was a soft knock on the door, closely followed by the same opening. Brandt broke off the sentence he had been about to start and instead greeted the newcomer. "Mr. Secretary."

"Agent Brandt," Hunley replied. "I believe you're expected in conference room 3, I'll take over for you here."

Brandt looked a little surprised, but then nodded and vacated his chair. "Thank you, sir," he replied, fetching his coffee mug from the table and hurried out of the room.

"Now, Agent Holt, Agent Bray," the secretary started, settling into the now empty third chair. "I'm sorry we had to call both of you back into active field work on such short notice, but a somewhat time critical situation has come up and the two of you are as close as we can get to a perfect fit for this mission."

Both agents perked up. It was rare enough that the secretary debriefed a team in person.

"Since the beginning of this year IMF has been watching an emerging group of female rights activists, calling themselves the Pink Rose," Hunley continued. "Most of them are peaceful activists, but some factions along the west coast have shown a willingness to employ more forceful tactics.

"So far they have not reverted to outright violence yet. Most of the time their victims were men in highly paid positions, mostly managers, but also politicians or government employees in high places. They would pick up their children from school on a Friday afternoon and let them worry over the weekend, only to return them save and sound on Monday morning, or break into and trash their apartments. In some cases it also seems they hacked into bank accounts, diverting a certain amount of money. Their point is to show the public how undervalued women are in society.

"There has also been a second kind of attacks, which consist of harassment of certain individuals. Most of these victims have been convicted of rape or domestic violence, and we suspect that those attacks have been acts of revenge, which might indicate that these men all have a history with at least one member of the group. The problem is that, although we know that this branch of the group is behind those acts, there is no solid evidence to tie it to them or an individual. Also, we have very little information about who belongs to those extremists, and if we can, we want to take out the violent elements without endangering the group itself.

"The worst they have done so far, aside from the kidnappings, is a large amount of material damage. However, the incidents attacking individuals directly have not been limited to simple harassment. Lately, they have started date-rape like attacks. And they have also broadened the circle of their victims from ex-convicts to those suspected of rapes or just random patrons of establishments where the police suspect sexual assaults to be happening more frequently."

"So they're probably also going to hit a lot of innocents in the process," Elaine put in, her formerly mildly amused expression suddenly sour. She grimaced. "The most usual substances used for spiking drinks are rohypnol, better known as roofies, and Liquid X, a form of ecstasy. Even if they're not tainted with byproducts, together with the usually high percentage of alcohol in drinks, they could cause serious health problems to the victim. And if they're home-cooked and overdosed, it's only a matter of time until they cause someone serious damage. Or death."

"Which is precisely why we want to keep the number of their victims as small as possible," Hunley gently interrupted her elaborations, before she could get too deeply into it. "Luckily they have provided us with the means to do just that along the way. And the reason I'd like to have the two of you on that mission."

The secretary passed each of them a file, on the front page of each there were two mugshots. The two women in the pictures looked almost alike, or at least very similar. Both featured a rather pale complexion and brown hair. The one on the left had a square face, framed by straight shoulder-length hair of a lively walnut-brown which enhanced her intelligent muddy brown eyes. The other woman had a somewhat more straight and slender face, her features showing a more pronounced bone structure, her hair was longer and brighter, bordering on the red ranges, and her eyes faded more into the green area, but the similarities that indicated two people from the same family were undeniable.

"These are Andrea and Simone Jenkins, better known as the Jenkins Sisters. Andrea, the younger one, has a degree in pharmacology," Hunley explained. "Also, she is a talented cook, of crystal meth mainly, but she has been working with other substances, too, in the past. Her older sister Simone is working as an accountant, her last employment was with a law firm, but she has a habit of changing her employer every other year. Her main income comes from fencing off her sister's home made drugs.

"Although they are well known in the scene, they have made a point of generally keeping a low profile so far. They have managed to keep under the radar of the authorities mainly thanks to Simone's creative bookkeeping, but they have agreed to work with us, for an occasional favor in return. A while ago, they have been approached by what we believe to be the leading elements of the Pink Rose's extremists, to help them with their plans by providing the drugs they need. In return for new identities and, if necessary, witness protection, they have agreed to let us send in two agents posing as them. Which would be you."

"Just one problem," Skye put in, trying hard to hide the dread behind her voice. "They don't exactly look like us. Or rather, we don't really look like them."

"That's true," Hunley admitted. "Plus this might evolve into a long-term mission and you will properly be living in close quarters with the others from the group so using masks would be to dangerous."

There was an audible sigh of relief from Skye.

"However the Jenkins Sisters have never met anyone from the group in person, all they have is a rough description. And as neither Andrea nor Simone have ever been in that area, the chances of anyone knowing them there are minimal," the secretary continued. "Aside from that, you both have the necessary skills and experience, and you look sufficiently alike to be taken for siblings."

He paused and looked at both agents expectantly.

Elaine replied with a shrug. "I'm in."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter two**

"This is getting annoying," Elaine muttered, ripping out the rubber band that had been barely holding together the now muddy brown strands and brushed out her hair over the right side of her neck.

Skye had already noticed that new habit in the debriefing the previous day. She guessed it was to cover up the scar on her neck Skye knew to be there although by now it had shrunk into a barely visible white line. "It's not going to hold if you keep fiddling with it," she pointed out.

Elaine grimaced and started gathering the strands back up.

Skye watched her efforts with a smile, then finally offered her help when they failed again. Making the other agent face the window she expertly twisted the barely long enough hair into a tight bun and secured it with the rubber band while outside rolling hills sped past.

After a long hair-dye session that had turned her own hair a light caramel color with a reddish golden shine, they had flown out to Phoenix that very evening to catch the late greyhound bus to San Diego where they would meet with the Pink Rose. They had caught a little sleep on the five hour flight and the first hours of the bus ride, but dawn was only just breaking outside and they still had a long ride ahead.

"There you go," Skye announced once she was sure all hair was securely tucked away.

"Thanks," Elaine muttered, carefully feeling the top knot.

"Don't fiddle," Skye warned jokingly, then leaned back in her seat, reaching for her earphones.

"What are you listening to?" Elaine asked

"AC/DC," Skye answered, one of the speakers already in her ear.

Elaine looked back at her blankly. "Is that a band?"

"Yes," Skye replied, her stare growing incredulous when she realized the other woman was serious. "You've never heard of AC/DC before?"

Elaine shrugged. "I spent my formative years cooking meth."

"You've never listened to AC/DC before," Skye reiterated, still stunned. Then she handed the other earbud to her fellow agent and started searching through her play-list. "We have to change that."

The rest of the ride they spent listening to AC/DC with Skye lecturing in between songs. She had just finished the story of how she had snuck away for a weekend when she was 18 to go see a concert of the Ballbreaker tour in Copenhagen in 1996 and subsequently been grounded until her graduation, when there was an announcement over the speakers that they were about to arrive in San Francisco. Elaine plucked the earbud from her ear and pointed at the MP3 player. "Could I borrow that?"

Skye smiled. "Sure," she said and handed her the device. Then they fetched their bags from the overhead storage bin and left the bus.

On the pavement outside was a woman holding a sheet of paper onto which someone had written 'Jenkins' in broad letters. She was dressed in gray jeans and a flowing black tank top with shiny bracelets around her well-tanned arms. Her curly black hair was held together by an ornate sliver clasp that looked as if it could barely contain its volume.

"Andrea and Simone?" she greeted them with a well trained smile. "I'm Phoebe-Anne."

Without another word she led them away to a battered black Ford Granada. She let them onto the back seat before climbing behind the steering wheel. They drove in silence until they were on the interstate and already headed straight outside town.

"Where are we going?" Skye asked.

"L.A.," Phoebe-Anne replied. "There's a chance you were followed, and we can't take the risk.

Skye watched Elaine's face drop. It was a tiny motion, but by now she knew the other woman well enough to notice.

"Can we have food first?" Bray asked once she had picked her mask back up. "And a bathroom?"

Their driver frowned, so Skye added: "We've been on the bus all morning."

"Yeah, sure," Phoebe-Anne replied and gave them another carefully crafted smile through the rear-view mirror. At the next exit she pulled off the interstate and into the parking lot of the first fast food restaurant.

While Phoebe-Anne went to get them some food, both agents headed for the bathroom.

"Well, that wasn't part of the plan," Elaine grumbled once they had checked they were alone.

"No, but it doesn't change anything," Skye pointed out. "We'll set a tracker once it's safe and if we can't we're on our own anyway."

"Yeah," Elaine replied less than enthusiastic.

Skye regarded her warily. "Do you have a problem with L.A.?"

Elaine hesitated, then shook her head. "No."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"It's all about the women, you see," the woman who had introduced herself as Pamela said with a pronounced southern drawl. She had a round face framed by long curly hair that was neither blond nor brown nor red, but a mixture of all three. Her brightly painted lips wore a constant smile and tight blue jeans, knee-high boots and a tucked in shirt that was held together by a way too broad belt completed the stereotype.

Right after they had parked in front of the large two-story building that was painted in a dirty rust color, Phoebe-Anne had introduced them to Pamela, who was something like the unofficial mum of the place and handling acquisitions, and Lorena, who was actually in charge.

Pamela had been talking constantly since then, taking them on a tour of the house, while Lorena quietly tagged along behind them. Phoebe had vanished somewhere along the way.

"We're like a contact point. Abusive husband, stalker boyfriend, unexpected pregnancy – women come here when they don't know where else to go," Pamela explained. "We give them food and a place to crash for a few days, get them in contact with police, hospitals and non-profits for a more permanent solution."

"That's why we're doing it," Lorena said. She had been silent so far and her husky voice was surprising. "We're tired of just picking up the pieces. It's important, but it's never gonna help as much as going straight for the cause."

They walked through a heavy glass and metal door into a staircase and down into the basement. "So, what exactly do you want us to do?"

"We've had a couple of date-rape victims here lately, and we've decided to fight back. Let the guys know how it is. Just knock them out and let them wake up in an empty street, nothing really bad," Lorena explained. "So far we used sleeping tablets we got from our pharmacy, but if we need more that's gonna start looking suspicious..."

She stopped abruptly. They had reached a heavy metal door painted almost the same gray as the concrete walls that opened into a large room. The walls were lined with tiled workbenches were littered with flasks and instruments. A woman was standing in the middle with her back to them, and the moment they rounded the corner, Elaine ran up to her, ripped the flasks from her hands and shoved them as far as she could onto the cluttered workbench nearby before she pulled the woman to the floor. The brew in the larger flask bubbled over, spraying everywhere.

"What the fuck?" the woman shouted scrambling to her feet. She was barely 20 years old and had long brown braids dangling from her head.

"Maria, language," Lorena scolded her.

Elaine considered a hole that had opened in the sleeve of her sweater. "You're welcome," she said dryly, then looked up at Lorena. "I'm gonna make you whatever you want, but only me and my sister get access to the lab and you'll give me exactly what I say I need. Starting with a new sweater."

"Lorena!" Maria called, exasperated. "You can't just let them throw me out of the lab! Who even are they?"

"Maria, shush," Lorena interrupted, then sighed and turned back to the others. "Please excuse my sister."

"Well," Elaine put in, looking at the younger but taller woman. "Feel free to blow yourself up, but I'm not going to stick around and watch it."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter three**

_He was surprised when there was light in the lab. It was just after ten PM and he didn't know anyone who voluntarily stayed in after seven. At first, he assumed someone had left on the light until he saw the person standing at one of the tiled workbenches._

"_Get out now, or I'll kick you out," she said with barely a side glance at him._

_The man paused in the door and gave her a warm grin. "Well, good evening to you, too."_

"_It would be nice if you'd let me work. Alone," the woman said with a sigh and put down a glass beaker. "Also it's not wise to creep up on people handling dangerous substances."_

"_Come on," the man said with a smile. "You have the makings of pentaerythritol tetranitrate here, but PETN is almost as stable as TNT, so don't talk to me about dangerous."_

_The woman turned around, and for the first time, he saw her face. Somehow the partially furious and thoroughly annoyed look on her face was almost cute. "Try H2O," she replied._

"_Water is not even combustible," he answered, but she held his gaze._

"_Depends on the temperature," she replied._

"_Touché," he admitted._

"_Now what do you want?" She looked up at him with crossed arms._

"_Why do you think I want something?" he asked._

"_Field types like you always want something when they come down here," she retorted._

"_And what makes you think I'm a field agent?"_

"_There's only two kinds of people who wear guns in this building," she replied and turned back to her flasks. "And you're not security."_

"_In that case, I want to take you out for dinner," he said, moving up behind her._

"_Thanks, but I just had breakfast," she replied dryly and took a step sideways. "Now, get out."_

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"So how come you don't know AC/DC?" Skye asked by way of polite conversation. They had been with the Pink Rose for three days now and started their work there by cleaning up the lab. They had started by checking it and the room they had been assigned for bugs, and since they had found none and Elaine was ruthlessly enforcing her policy of not letting anyone else in they were able to talk freely. Especially since they had installed their own surveillance equipment in the corridor outside that would alert them if anyone was about to knock on the door.

Since then they had found that cleaning up the equipment and properly labeling the assorted chemicals would take them at least a week, not that they were in any hurry. At first, Elaine had entertained them with cursing the mess the amateurs had made but by now they had fallen into a comfortable work rhythm. Earlier Skye had even heard Elaine hum, something she hadn't thought possible until then, and after a while identified the tune as _T.N.T_.

"I just don't know bands," Elaine answered the question with a shrug.

"AC/DC is not just a band," Skye replied. For a moment she thought she had offended the other woman, but then she saw her smile.

"Guess I just never had anyone to teach me," Elaine said. There was silence for a while, then she continued: "My parents both died when I was very young. After that, I was constantly moving between orphanages and foster homes. I wasn't an easy child, never stayed in place for more than a year or two. Until I got to college..."

"I'm sorry," Skye replied softly when it became obvious Elaine wouldn't continue.

Elaine shrugged again. "It's okay," she said with a crooked smile, then changed the topic. "So, how did you get from a village bakery to IMF? You mentioned it on the bus," she added when Skye looked surprised.

Skye smiled. "I went to university in Copenhagen, took some time abroad in Glasgow and one of my teachers there was recruiting for IMF," she explained. "I didn't go straight into field training though, spent three years in Extractions..."

She was interrupted by a knock on the door.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"_Hey."_

"_You again," the woman rolled her eyes when she turned around and saw who stood in the door. "You better stay out."_

"_Any good reason to keep me outside?"_

_The woman turned around again, this time with a petri-dish in her hand that was filled with a fine white powder. He noticed that she was wearing a white face-mask. "Gamma hydroxybutyrate."_

"_GHB, Liquid X," he replied, still standing in the door. "Doesn't look very liquid though."_

_The woman put the petri-dish back, rolling her eyes. "What do you want?"_

"_Take you out for dinner, I thought we had established that," he answered and held up a cupcake with thick chocolate cream. "But since you won't come out of that lab, I thought this time I'd bring you something over."_

"_I don't eat in my lab," she answered and turned back around._

"_What? Are you one of those neat and tidy girls who are afraid of every crumble on their cushions?"_

"_I make drugs, I don't want to end up taking them," she replied dryly. "And if you don't want to become an accidental test subject, I suggest you get out now."_

"_You'll have to come out eventually," he grinned, as he retreated backwards through the door._

"_Right," the woman said and turned around one more time. "Just leave it at the door."_

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"So how did you end up a field agent?"

The question came as a surprise to Skye. Almost a week had passed since they had last scratched the topic. They had filled the days with small talk and slowly but surely Elaine had started to crawl out of her shell, but Skye had avoided digging deeper into the other woman's past, so that Elaine bringing it up unprovoked was unexpected.

Skye shrugged. "Maddox talked me into it," she said. "And once I was in I guess I was too proud and stubborn to let it go."

"He's got a habit of doing that," Elaine voiced her equivalent of a chuckle. "Maddox kicked me into field training, too. The first two times anyway. And then he recruited Yumi for help – Dr. Lee," she corrected herself.

Skye looked at her curiously. "How did you get on first-name basis with Dr. Lee anyway?"

Elaine smiled. "When I was recruited into IMF," she said, emphasizing the verb, "they didn't know what to do with me. They didn't trust me enough to let me do anything important, but just keeping me locked up would have been impractical, and I wanted to stay, so they put me up in the infirmary. Because everyone working there needs security clearance, they're always a bit short on simple help and I wouldn't be working unsupervised. I was mostly doing grunt work, I didn't mind it, and most of the doctors and nurses were content to just let me do my stuff. But Lee started teaching me bits and pieces. I don't think she was really serious at first, but she liked explaining and I liked to listen. And then there was a chemical spill in one of the labs. Suddenly we had some twenty people vomiting all over infirmary and between handing out puke bags and mopping up sick, I found myself setting up saline drips and monitoring and twice catching guys who had decided to get up despite being specifically not to."

She paused just long enough to shrug. "I guess Yumi thought I had potential because after that she started training me properly and at some point there we must have slipped into first names."

"From what I've seen so far, she taught you pretty well," Skye put in, then chuckled. "It's funny that we never ran into each other."

"Probably we did and just don't remember," Elaine pointed out. "Also I wasn't a very social person. And after two – well, two and a half tries at field training I put in a transfer for the labs, working night shifts and snapping at everyone who came within five feet. The only ones who'd voluntarily talk to me were Benji and some obnoxious field agent type who dropped by in the middle of the night every couple of weeks and insisted on flirting with me and bringing me cupcakes."

Skye stared at her for a moment, then laughed out loud. "That was you."

"I was what?" Elaine asked uncomprehendingly.

"That obnoxious guy was Connor Mathison," Skye explained, "my old partner. He had a talent for chatting up women and a habit of telling me about it."

Elaine blinked at her in surprise, then she asked almost carefully: "What happened to him?"

"He died," Skye replied. "On a mission, five years ago."

"I'm sorry," Elaine muttered.

Skye gave her a sentimental smile. "It's okay."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"_Consolidated Insurance, how can I help you?"_

_Connor leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling for a bit, but eventually closed his eyes._

"_Location? Copy that, please hold." Skye redialled without putting the phone away. "I need a helicopter in San Antonio, Texas, as close to the San Antonio Water System as you can get."_

_Connor could sense her annoyance at the response on the line even though her voice remained calm. Skye had taken over a shift at Extractions for a friend, and Connor was bored at home, so he spent his day off at HQ._

"_There's a park nearby, I just sent you the coordinates. If you take off now you can be there in three minutes. Stand by to take in two agents." She pushed the key to get back to the other line. "There's a helicopter waiting for you in Davis Park. Good luck." Skye hung up the phone and took a deep breath. "Sorry. You were saying?"_

_Connor rose from his sunken position and resumed their conversation. "Does it ever annoy you that you can't humbly brag about mission stuff when you chat someone up?"_

"_Very much, actually," Skye admitted. "I would have some pretty good lines for that."_

"_Right?" Connor said, grateful that someone shared his world view._

"_Sometimes I do use them and play them off as jokes. But it's not the same."_

"_Just last week I saved at least five people, probably more, depending on how stable the walls would have been if the thing had gone off. If that isn't attractive I don't know what is, but my point is-"_

_The phone rang. "Consolidated Insurance – acknowledged." Skye redialed. "Yusuf, we have a code three. I need you to cut all electricity to 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle in Lyon. Yes, I know that. You have sixty seconds." Skye hung up and redialed again. Her French was too quick for Connor to catch everything._

"_Did you just call them a cab?" he chuckled._

"_They'll ditch it soon, for now they just have to get out of there. Where were we?"_

"_I found a way to flirt using classified stories."_

_Intrigued, Skye raised her eyebrows and leaned forward._

"_You just have to flirt with people who have security clearance."_

"_I thought you were against dating colleagues."_

"_I'm against dating field agents. But there are entire departments below us who know what's happening out there without ever getting to see it."_

_Skye knew now where this was headed, and smiled at her friend's predictability. "So who is she?"_

"_She works at the chemistry labs. She's into baggy clothes and knows a bit about explosives, but not everything – it's adorable."_

"_So what's her name?"_

"_You got me there."_

"_You don't know her name?"_

_Connor sighed. "Let's say it's a work in progress."_

"_Sounds to me like she's not interested."_

"_Just because she wouldn't tell me her name?"_

_Skye let two seconds go by in silence, looking at Connor to see if his words would sink in without her help. "Yes," she said finally._

"_You don't know her like I do. She just wants me to try harder."_

_Now Skye sighed. "Connor, we've been through this..."_

"_No," he reassured her. "This is different, I promise you. I'll keep it classy."_

_Skye looked skeptical. "Are we talking dinner?"_

"_Dinner and a kiss on the doorstep. If she wants to," he added._

"_Will you let her pick the place?"_

_Connor knew this was a trick question. "...yes."_

"_I'm impressed," Skye smiled._

"_I told you my intentions are honorable."_

"_All right, I'm sold. But if she won't even tell you her name you have a long way to go."_

"_I only tried two times so far."_

"_Twice already?" Skye, well aware of how charming Connor could be if he wanted to, started to have doubts again._

_He wouldn't have it. "Tell you what, we'll make a bet. I give you five dollars for each time she doesn't give me her name."_

"_So far I like this."_

"_And I get fifty bucks from you once she does."_

_Skye considered._

"_Which I will then pay for her dinner with."_

"_Okay, fine."_

_Connor grinned triumphantly and held out his hand to her._

"_But," Skye said, "no cheating. You can't ask her friends, you can't pickpocket her ID, and you're not allowed to get Yusuf to hack the database for you."_

"_Deal."_

"_Nor any other techie."_

"_I won't cheat, I promise," Connor laughed. "It only counts if she tells me. Come on. Five against fifty, and for a good cause."_

_Skye rolled her eyes, but had to chuckle herself. "All right."_

_They shook hands on it._

"_In that case you owe me ten bucks," Skye remarked._

"_Are you serious?"_

"_It was your idea."_

_The phone rang again, and Skye answered with a smile as Connor grudgingly handed her a crumpled bill of ten dollars._

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"Hey, Skye?"

The disembodied voice floated through the dark and in her almost asleep state, it took the recipient a moment to realize it was coming from the bunk bed above. "Yeah?"

"Connor," Elaine started, sounding unsure, "he sounds like a cool guy."

It had been another week since they had discussed him and she had obviously been pondering what Skye had told her.

"Yeah," Skye replied and swallowed. "He was pretty cool."

"I'm sorry I wasn't any nicer to him," Elaine said after a moment. "I wasn't very good company."

"Actually he liked talking to you, or he wouldn't have kept going back," Skye put in but was answered by silence. When she was sure there was going to be no reply, she had to smile and added: "He even bet me he could figure out your name. You earned me quite some money over the years."

Elaine chuckled. "You're welcome."

They were silent after that, but neither of them fell asleep quickly.

"So, Skye T...?" Elaine asked after a while.

The old nickname name sent a little jolt through her body. Still it took Skye a moment to understand the question. "Yeah, that was his thing."

"It's a cool name," Elaine said and after a moment added: "Do you mind if I use it?"

Something stung deceptively in her eyes. Skye was glad Elaine couldn't see her in the dark when she bit her lip in order to regain control over her feelings. "Sure."

The silence stretched again and she already suspected Elaine to be asleep, when the other woman asked: "Skye T.?"

"Yeah?" Skye answered. She hoped her hushed voice didn't betray her. It sounded so strange out of someone else's mouth, but at the same time so painfully familiar. She squeezed her eyes shut and the tears spilled over.

"You know Benji talked me into field training?"

It sounded almost like a rhetorical question. Skye had to smile, Benji had told her the story. "Yeah."

"Did you know it was actually Connor's fault?"

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"_Long time no see," the man said with a grin. The lab-tech at the work-bench jumped up in surprise and turned. In the same motion she got hold of his left arm, twisting it on his back and thus shoved him against the opposite desk._

"_You," she said with an exasperated sigh. "I thought we had established it's a bad idea to creep up on me while I'm working?"_

"_Sorry?" he answered meekly, somehow still balancing a tray of cupcakes on his right hand._

"_I thought we had also established that I don't eat in my lab," she replied, glowering at the pastries._

"_I made sure you didn't have any explosive, combustible, acidic, hallucinogenic or otherwise dangerous substances flying around this time," he answered with a not in the slightest apologetically grin._

"_So you don't call tranquilizers dangerous? The kind where one drop drops a horse?" she said and dug into a strawberry cream cake. "You're just lucky it's a very stable ingestion-safe fluid."_

"_Just my lucky day I guess," he grinned and ruffled his thick honey-colored hair._

_The woman just glowered back at him, silently chewing her cupcake._

"_So, where did you learn that move? That was pretty good," he said, but was answered only with silence. Then it dawned on him. "Wait, did you go for field training?" he asked, and ignored the fact that there was no reply. "That's awesome! How did it go?"_

"_What do you think?" she hissed back licking her fingers. "You think I'd still be working here if I made it through?"_

"_I'm still working here, occasionally," he said. The woman demonstratively stared at the cupcakes. "But you know, it's not bad to not make it through on the first try."_

"_That was my third take," she grumbled, just as there was a knock on the door. A man with a lab-coat and very short, very blond hair peeked in. "I, uh... I got the new prototypes," he stammered. "I'm sorry... am I... Is this a bad time? I can come back."_

"_No, come in," the woman said. She took the cardboard case from the technician, who was somewhat wide-eyed, staring from the field agent to the tray of cupcakes. "Help yourself," she said and set the case down on the desk._

"_Three times, huh?" the agent asked. "What happened?"_

"_I didn't pass," she said as if stating the obvious._

"_Yeah, right, but how?" he asked again. She glowered at him, while the technician watched everything wide-eyed, munching his cupcake. "I mean, it's not that hard. Even I did it."_

_The chemist snorted. "Alright," she said then. "The first time I almost made it through. Then lost my temper on one of the last tests, broke a guys arm, got kicked. Second time around the same guy was also in, slipped me some laxative. I spent over a month in quarantine until they were sure I didn't have some virus or worms or something."_

"_And this time?" the man asked and she sighed._

"_This time I just messed up."_

"_Well, I think you should try again," the man said. "I mean you almost made it twice, maybe now you'll get that one notch that gets you through? It's definitely worth it."_

_The woman smiled, but shook her head. "Last time I really blew it," she said. "I'm just not good with computers. And that kind of stuff doesn't get easier."_

"_I.. uh... Maybe I could help you with that," the technician chimed in from the background._

"_You want to go field agent, too, huh?" the agent grinned, and finally took a cupcake, too. "Don't get me wrong. I think that's an awesome idea."_

"_Yeah, well, I just thought..." the technician continued. "I mean, it's... It was just an idea."_

"_I think you guys should go for it," the agent said and headed for the door. He winked at the chemist. "See you in the field some time."_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter four**

The knock on the door sounded dull and metallic. Elaine was measuring liquid into a flask and gave Skye a side-glance, who was drying off some freshly washed instruments. The Dane paused and went to open the door.

Lorena peeked through the crack. "I need to talk to you, both of you," she said. "Can I come in?"

Elaine finished her measuring and made sure the chemicals were safely put away before she nodded. "Don't touch anything."

Lorena stepped into the lab and leaned against a work bench across from the two agents. "We have a job for you," she opened.

"We're pretty occupied already," Elaine pointed out and made a gesture that encompassed the whole lab with different stages of various products spread out over several benches.

"We know, and it's okay if you pause that for a while," Lorena said and took a deep breath. "Lately we've had contact with a few girls who are dancing in a night club whose owner isn't above abusing them for his own profit and pleasure. You've met Christine."

Both agents nodded. Christine was a petite pale brunette who had come into the midway house a few days back, sporting impressive bruises. She had been very shy and hesitant to talk about what had happened to her, but with the context Lorena had just given them it wasn't hard to imagine.

"We want to give him a little payback," Lorena explained. "The problem is, we can't get close enough. We're in contact with several of his dancers, in fact Phoebe and Maria are working for him at the moment, but for the most part he's very careful to keep things work-related. But we know that you'd fit his type. And he's got a thing for sisters."

Skye raised an eyebrow. "So you want us to go work as dancers, purely because we're related, on the off chance we get close enough to do what exactly?"

Lorena shrugged. "Whatever you want. Knock him out and dump him in some dark alley on the other end of town would be my idea, but as long as you don't kill him, feel free to be creative if you think it serves the purpose," she said. "We can't know what's going to happen once you're in, so it's not like we can really make a plan, you'll just have to do whatever works out. I think getting you there is the hard part."

"And we're gonna have to dance, right?" Elaine put in unconvinced. "Because I haven't danced, like, ever."

"That's not actually a problem," Lorena said with a slightly sour smile. "Phoebe and Maria can show you a few basic moves, the rest you'll learn on the job. The important thing is that you're pretty and look sufficiently alike to attract his attention. That should be enough to secure you the job."

Elaine looked at Skye and indicated a shrug. "Can we talk about this for a moment?" Skye asked. "Alone?"

Lorena nodded and got up from the work bench she was leaning against. "Sure," she said and left the lab.

"So," Elaine asked once the door had closed behind her, "are we going to do it?"

"I guess we should," Skye replied. "If we're successful we'll gain their trust and maybe they'll tell us more about their plans. Best case scenario we manage to send a report while we're outside."

Elaine nodded. Thanks to the bugs they had planted they were generally aware of everything going on in the Pink Rose, but it would be a lot easier if they could get the ringleaders to tell them about their plans instead of sifting through hours of footage every night. Also the equipment they brought was very limited and since they hadn't gotten a chance to leave the building they hadn't been able to make contact with the outside world in the five weeks since their arrival.

There was a public phone and a computer with Internet access available to everyone in the building, but even in the middle of the night there always was someone in the common room so they had decided reporting in that way was too risky for the little information they had.

"Yeah," Elaine sighed unhappily. "You're right."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Getting the job was even easier than Lorena had made it out to be. Mustafa Torleif, the owner of the club, had hired them almost the moment he had seen them and their 'audition' had only been proforma. They had walked an hour to work every day for over two weeks, but not yet had a chance to really get away, since either Maria or Phoebe were always with them.

They were only dancing in the early afternoon shows when there were hardly any guests around and the very late night ones, when most of the patrons were too drunk to really pay attention, reserving the prime time for the more experienced performers, but in between they were tasked with serving drinks and cleaning tables. A couple of times they had seen a familiar face in the audience but hadn't been able to get close enough to exchange anything. But at least they knew there was someone watching out for them.

On day 18 of their new employment, just as they were changing into their costumes, Mustafa came into the dressing room unannounced. "Sarah, Charlotte," he called. "I have a private engagement for you tonight. Come to my office when you're ready?"

Skye and Elaine turned around. Those were the names they had signed up as, since Lorena had insisted they couldn't use their 'real' names. And it seemed like her plan was finally actually working.

"You can't do that," Phoebe exclaimed. "We're already short-handed!"

But their boss just cut her off. "You'll manage," he said and shut the door again.

Phoebe-Anne let out a long, frustrated breath, then turned to the agents and gave them the closest thing to a smile they had seen from her so far. "Good luck, girls."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Torleif's office was a dingy little room with a dust-covered wooden desk and an old creaky office chair. Behind the desk was a door with scaling paint and through this Mustafa ushered the agents after they arrived in this office. The room behind it was as dimly lit as the rest of the establishment, but felt far more comfortable. As far as they could tell the carpeted floor was even clean and two large and simple but tastefully designed couches dominated the room with a low glass table in the middle. Two men in suits that were meant to look expensive were sitting on one of the sofas.

"You do have an eye for beauty," one of them announced as they entered and got up. He was tall, his suit obviously too short around the wrists and ankles and had black hair that had a blue tinge from cheap hair-dye. His companion was over a head shorter with grey-streaked brown hair standing off his head in all directions and a generally dishevelled appearance.

"These two gentlemen want to have some extra fun tonight," Mustafa explained eagerly. "If you do what they say you will get double salary for this week and the rest of tonight and tomorrow off."

Elaine exchanged a glance with Skye who indicated a shrug.

"It's a good deal, you should take it," the tall man put in, eyeing them over openly with an appreciative smile, then he turned to Elaine. "I promise, you won't regret it," he said and lightly put a hand on her shoulder.

From the corner of her eye, Elaine could see the other man shuffling towards Skye, then suddenly tensed as the man's hand wandered down her back and she could suddenly feel his cold sweatiness on her bare skin where the fabric of her skimpy top ended.

He must have noticed her reaction. "No need to be scared," he said, but his bare-toothed smile told a different story as his hand continued to travel south. When his fingers pushed under the waistband over her skirt, Elaine decided she had had enough and it was time to get unprofessional. First, she grabbed his right wrist with her left hand to prevent it from going further, then she added her right hand on his elbow with the intend of throwing him into the wall behind her, but he must have anticipated some resistance on her part, because he caught her right arm with his left before she could execute the manoeuvre and instead of throwing him into the wall, she ended up throwing herself right at the glass table.

There was nothing she could do to avoid it, but as she hit the table the glass top slid right off too shatter on the floor while the metal leg construction collapsed underneath her. Thanking her lucky stars she tried to get back up, but while she had lost her grip on the man's wrist, his hand was still tightly closed around her right arm and as she scrambled off the remains of the table, he kicked her hard in the back of the knees, sending her back down. He lunged for her left arm, and when she managed to keep it out of reach, he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled back hard.

Elaine fought back tears at the sudden pain and arched her body back over the sharp knee that was pushed into her ribcage. Blindly she groped over the floor with her left hand until she found a large triangular shard of glass. With gritted teeth she threw herself forward while bringing the sharp edge down behind her head. The glass cut through a good amount of hair with a sickly ripping sound before it hit the man's hand.

With a painful cry he let go and Elaine fell forward, but she had been counting on that. Pulling up her left leg underneath her torso she kicked out with her right foot and caught the man right in the knee he had been shoving into her back, making him fall backwards. The man was still holding on to her right arm, trying to regain his balance, but now she could use it as leverage and forced him onto his back.

Leaning over him she put one knee over his pelvis and abdomen to keep him there. For a moment Elaine considered slitting his throat with the glass shard still in her hand, but then decided it would be enough to knock him out with a swift blow to the temple. When she looked up, she saw that in the meantime Skye had incapacitated the other man and was going after Mustafa who had fled into his office.

Her boss was urgently talking on the phone and didn't see her elbow coming before it connected to his head and knocked him out cold. Pushing him aside on the office chair, Skye picked up the receiver.

"Hello?" A female voice sounded from the other end. "Sir? Are you still there?"

She looked at the display. 911.

"Sir, I'm going to send over a patrol car. They should be there in a few minutes," the operator continued.

Skye hung up. "He called the police," she informed the other agent, when Elaine had caught up with her. "We've got to get out of here."

Bray nodded. "Clothes?" she asked, indicating the changing room.

"Yeah," Skye agreed, following her. The room was empty, the other dancers had just started the first show. They quickly grabbed their clothes from the rack, but just as Elaine had put on her sweater, sirens sounded outside. With a silent curse she picked up her pants and hurried after Skye and out through the back door where they were greeted by a police flashlight.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Detective James Ford was happy to leave the precinct after a 24 hour shift and almost at the door, when someone called him back.

"Hey, Ford?" the officer at the reception desk called. "There's someone asking for you."

For turned around sharply. "Like who?"

The officer shrugged. "Two girls. We picked them up after a call-in about an altercation at a night club. We found three guys knocked out, and them. They're probably working there, but so far they've refused to identify themselves. Or tell us anything, except that they want to talk to you."

Ford frowned and ran a hand over his face. "Can't that wait until tomorrow?"

"You really want to come in on your free day?" the officer asked with a wry smile.

"Alright," Ford said with a defeated sigh. "Where?"

"Interrogation room two," the officer said almost happily.

On the way to interrogation room two the detective kept wondering about what two strippers could want from him and by the time he arrived there, he had come to the conclusion it could be worse. His spirits rose a little more when he saw who was waiting for him, but in the back of his mind an alarm bell started ringing.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered, but hen his face brightened when he saw the woman. "Hello Miss Marvel. Where did you leave the rest of the Avengers?"

"I'd prefer Captain Marvel," Skye replied, happy to drop out of the American accent she had adopted for the mission. "And neither of them is actually part of the Avengers."

"You read comics?" Ford asked in an almost flirty way, leaning against the beaten metal table in the middle of the interrogation room.

"You clearly don't," the agent replied, a statement rather then a question.

"What happened to your hair, blondie?"

"None of your business, Sawyer," Skye said sweetly.

"So, who's your sidekick?" the detective continued, catching the hint that she wasn't up for playing games, glancing at the short-haired woman in a baggy sweater and grimy jeans. "Hey, what the..."

Elaine had snatched the notebook he had put aside on the table, together with the pen he had still been holding loosely in his right hand and torn out a page. Now she was scribbling on the ragged piece of paper, ignoring Ford.

"Agent Bray," Skye introduced her with a hint of amusement in her voice.

Ford kept his eyes fixed on Bray who didn't even acknowledge him until she had finished her message. Then she handed the slightly crumbled, folded up paper to the detective. A name was written on the outside in barely legible letters. "There's another agent probably looking for us, chances are he's going to show up here. Give this to him."

"Is she always like this?" Ford asked without turning to Skye.

"Only on her good days," Holt replied.

Elaine suppressed a sigh. "Can we go now?"

"Will you at least tell me what you're involved in?" the detective put in and intercepted her halfway to the door.

Bray looked up at him with barely concealed annoyance. "Classified."

"I could be helpful," Ford suggested. "Also I could just have you locked up again."

Elaine looked him over as if considering which bone to break first when Skye stepped in. "We're undercover with the Pink Rose."

"The feminist group?" Ford asked almost amused.

"More like terrorist organization," Elaine muttered.

"What have they done?" the detective continued.

"Nothing yet," Skye admitted. "Nothing dangerous, anyway. And it's our job to make sure they're not going to."

Ford waited a moment to let her explain more but when the agent wasn't forthcoming he sighed and opened the door. "Alright, ladies," he said. "Right this way."

Just as she passed him Skye leaned over. "Oh, and if I were you, I wouldn't visit any nightclubs in the near future."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter five**

"You're letting them out?" The officer at the reception desk looked up from his paperwork in surprise.

"Well, if anything it was self-defense and we got nothing to hold them on. Besides, you should just be happy I got them off your back, pal," Ford commented as he signed the release form. The young officer looked unimpressed, so out of a whim he leaned over the counter and added in a low voice: "They're feds working undercover on some high profile case. I've worked with them before so if they come in here again, I want you to call me."

The officer's eyes suddenly went wide. Then he quickly looked down at his papers since he had clearly been checking out the two women and nodded meekly, his head beet red.

Ford shoved the form and the pen back at the officer and turned around to the agents. "You're free to go," he said with a grand gesture at the front door.

With a silent sigh, Elaine turned to the door, when she was interrupted. "Excuse me," a second officer said who at the reception desk and had probably overheard the whole exchange. He was visibly older than the first officer with a friendly, round face, the few hairs still framing his otherwise bald head glistening silver. He was the only other person in the reception space.

"Ma'am," his sonorous voice rumbled as he hesitantly cleared his throat. "Are you related to Caroline Lynch?"

His eyes had been fixed on Elaine but now swerved to the right where the wall was decked with framed photos of officers of the precinct who had been killed in the line of duty. The agents followed his gaze to the picture of a young woman with a broad, energetic smile, her blond hair tucked up under the police cap.

"She worked here, forty years ago," the officer explained. "Was killed in '77..." He broke off.

"I'm sorry, I don't know her," Elaine said blankly. "I grew up in Oregon and don't have any family in the area." Then she turned around and left the building in quick strides.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"You were supposed to drug him, not beat him up!"

"We didn't have much of a choice," Skye replied calmly, her cold stare facing Phoebe evenly across the table in the common room. Most of the other women currently residing in the shelter had already gone to bed or retreated to their rooms, so apart from her and Elaine only Lorena had been present and they had started recounting the events of the evening when Phoebe-Anne had returned from the night club.

"But she's right, if the police connect this back to us,..." Lorena put in only to be interrupted by Skye.

"We told them that we were working in the night club and assaulted by the men, so we defended ourselves," the agent said. "And they let us go. We gave them fake names and a fake address. There is no reason they would trace us back to the shelter."

"They didn't let you go that easily unless they know how to find you," Phoebe spat back. "You risked all our operations with that useless little stunt! Where are you going?"

She almost shouted the last words after Elaine who had got up and walked towards the door. Phoebe's last words made her look back. "Just consider for one moment that if the police figure out who we are we're in just as much trouble than you!" Elaine countered icily. Then she turned sharply and opened the door, almost running into Pamela.

"Someone's having a bad day?" the other woman asked almost cheerfully.

"Oh no," Elaine growled. "I've only had myself groped by a slimy old man and questioned by the police, only to be interrogated again here." Her voice had risen to an astonishing volume without her actually shouting. "Fuck, yes, I'm having a bad day!" she screamed, pushing aside the astonished Pamela and pulled the door shut with a bang.

Wordlessly Skye hurried after her.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Carefully Skye opened the door to their shared room. Elaine was changing into a fresh set of jeans and sweatshirt so she slipped in and quickly closed the door again. "Are you okay?" she asked quietly.

Elaine turned around with the hint of an amused smile on her face. "I just wanted to make sure I could get out unseen later," she replied. "You didn't actually buy my little temper tantrum, did you?"

"Almost," Skye admitted. "I thought, after what the cop said back at the station -" She cut herself off. "When do you have to leave?"

"I still got an hour," Elaine answered looking at her wristwatch.

"You want me to fix your hair before you leave?"

There was a hopeful glimmer in Elaine's eyes. "You can do that?"

"I don't think I could make it any worse," Skye pointed out with a smile. "Also it's not like I've never done it before."

"Alright," Elaine decided and positioned herself on the only chair in the room while Skye found a pair of reasonably sharp scissors. She started by cutting off the excess length on the hair that had been unaffected, then continued fine-tuning by trimming everything down to the length of the shortest hairs. She was halfway through when there was a soft knock on the door.

Skye paused in her cutting long enough to exchange a glance with Elaine, then indicated a shrug. Bray sighed, then took a deep breath until a calmly annoyed gaze had settled over her features again. "Yes?"

The door opened a gap and Lorena's head pushed through. "I hope I'm not interrupting..."

"Too late," Elaine said grimly, then sighed when the other woman was about to retreat. "Well, come in now you're already here."

Hesitantly Lorena stepped in and closed the door. "I'm sorry about Phoebe," she said. "You have to understand she is very protective of everyone here and she wasn't very happy about bringing in outsiders like you, to begin with. Also, I'm sorry we had to put you to the test like this."

Skye looked up for just a moment, but resumed her clipping almost instantly, so it was for Elaine to ask: "Test?"

"We had to be sure you could be trusted," Lorena answered carefully.

Elaine snorted. "And it took you two months to get to that?"

Lorena looked at the floor. "We had to wait for a good opportunity, besides," she continued before the agent could interject, "we have a new project that requires you to be more involved than before. We need you to build a bomb."

Elaine thoughtfully flexed her jaws for a moment, considering what to reply. "You realize that's not exactly my specialty?" she asked.

"It's more like several bombs, and over the course of a week, so you'd have a phase of trial and error," Lorena volunteered slowly, watching them closely.

Elaine wanted to nod thoughtfully, but Skye gently pulled her head back up and made sure it would stay there before she continued cutting. "I mean I can try, but I've never done it before, so I can't guarantee it will work," she said and shrugged ever so slightly. "Also the stuff I'll need might be a little hard to come by."

"That won't be a problem," Lorena replied. "What do you need?"

"That depends on what you want to blow up."

The woman hesitated. "A car," she replied. "Well, one each."

Elaine suppressed an annoyed sigh. "What kind of car?" When the other woman remained silent she patiently explained: "The more I know about what you need, the better chances I have to maybe actually make it work."

Lorena bit her lower lip and sat down on the bottom bunk of the bed. "A few high ranking politicians will be visiting in a week, who are heavily campaigning for anti-abortion laws," she explained and Elaine had a feeling she was purposefully trying to keep it vague. "We want to set a sign, blow up their cars. While they're not inside," she added quickly.

"That's all?" Elaine asked.

Hesitantly Lorena nodded. "For now," she said and for a moment it seemed like she wanted to add something more, but then didn't.

"Alright," Elaine said, trying to inconspicuously glance at her wristwatch. By now even if she left right away she was going to be overdue for her meeting. "I'll have to think about what I'll need. I'll give you a list tomorrow."

Lorena looked like she was about to argue, but then she nodded. "Okay," she said, then quickly got up and left their room.

With an audible sigh, Elaine sank back in her chair. Skye had long finished her haircut and the last couple of minutes kept herself busy cleaning up in the background. "Are you really going to build them a bomb?"

Elaine ran a hand through her hair, savoring the feeling of brushing through the short tips barely long enough to cover her fingers and shrugged. "Something close enough, but I think I can get by without actually blowing anything up," she said. Then she glanced at her watch again. "I'm running late, better get going."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter six**

Brandt blankly stared at the screen in front of him, then ran a hand through his hair in frustration. It was over five weeks by now since he had returned from Portugal with Benji and Luther only to find that Skye and Elaine hadn't been in contact since they left for San Francisco. That in itself shouldn't have been a cause for worry, considering the highly covert nature of their mission, but it still had made him and Benji rather uncomfortable. While Brandt was almost immediately back into his job as Chief Analyst, the technician was technically on sick leave for his broken hand and spent the major part of his time on searching up and down the West Coast for any trace of the two other agents.

His search had been fruitless until suddenly two weeks ago their transmitter signal had shown up in Los Angeles. It was only a few hours before it disappeared again, and the location didn't give them any idea of what was going on, especially since no one had expected it there, but when the signal appeared in the same place at the same time the following days, Hunley decided that Brandt should go to check it out.

The analyst would have suggested Benji for the job, who had just received a clean bill of health again, but then found out that the secretary had already earmarked him for another mission. In fact Brandt had thought that Hunley had been going easy on him for a while and that feeling had been confirmed when upon arriving in Los Angeles he had found that someone had locked him out of the IMF mainframe. Not entirely, but to the parts that were accessible only to him as Chief Analyst, the Secretary and a very well selected group of other people.

He suspected that Hunley thought he was doing him a favor but the truth was that right now he was very much bored and would have loved to be able to tackle the stacks of paperwork he knew were probably waiting for him back home. Also for years now, he had been aware of next to every IMF mission, since even before Ghost Protocol when he had been Chief Analyst to the previous secretary, and not knowing what was going on made him weirdly nervous.

With nothing better to do he had instead spent the time since his arrival in the small IMF issue apartment on in-depth research on the little new information he had. He had staked out both the shelter and the night club for several days, and twice gone into the club for a few hours, but there had been no convenient way for him to contact the agents and since they to his knowledge hadn't tried to contact him either, he had had to assume that everything was fine.

After that he had gone back to looking into any connections he could find, going down tangents he wouldn't have even come close to under normal circumstances, and found an astonishing amount of nothing.

A friendly but incessant ping from his computer ripped Brandt out of his thoughts and a look at the clock in the lower right corner of the screen made him realize he must have dozed off again. The jet-lag together with the lack of structure in his day had destroyed what had been left of his day-night-rhythm, but once the content of the notice on his screen had seeped into his conscious mind, he was wide awake:

The IMF database had just matched Skye's and Elaine's fingerprints to two women who had been arrested by the police. With a silent curse he jumped up and left the apartment, hoping that this wasn't a bad sign.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

By the time Brandt had made it to the precinct he had a plan. He walked right up to the front desk, where two uniformed officers were sitting and picked the younger one who seemed more impressionable. "Agent Brandt, CIA," he said, placing his ID on the counter. Next to it he put his phone on which he had called up mugshots of Skye and Elaine in their identity as the Jenkins Sisters. "You're holding two suspected terrorist."

"I'm sorry, sir," the officer said swallowing, "but they're not here any more."

"Then where are they now?" Brandt asked impatiently.

"They were released," the officer replied meekly, "like maybe ten minutes ago."

Brandt suppressed a sigh of relief that the two agents apparently weren't in any big trouble, but now he had to get through with his act. "You released them," he said coolly. "Do you know how long we've been looking for these women? Do you have any idea how dangerous they are? What they're capable of?"

"I'm sorry, sir," the officer answered again. "But I'm not responsible..."

"Sir, just a moment," the older officer interjected from the side, then shouted across the empty room: "Hey, Ford!"

The man who had just passed the reception desk and was almost at the door turned around. "Yes?" he asked borderline annoyed.

"This gentleman is inquiring about your two hookers," the older officer smirked. "He says he's CIA."

"Oh," Ford said more amicable and walked back towards them. He was tall and broad shouldered, with light brown hair verging on blond that was badly in need of a haircut and a grin spreading over his face as if he was laughing at a joke only he knew about. Something about him was unsettlingly familiar to Brandt.

"Agent Brandt, I suppose?" he asked and when the agent confirmed, he offered him a slightly crumbled folded piece of paper. "Agent Bray left you a message."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

DINNER AT MY MUM'S  
TONIGHT 10PM

Brandt looked at his watch again and then back at the note. There was no mistaking the handwriting, the increasingly cursive unruly scribbles were quite unique. But as dusk had turned into night, he had become increasingly worried. He had wondered before if he was at the right place, but it was the only location that made sense.

Besides both of the locator beacons she and Skye were wearing had disappeared near the Pink Rose building, as they had the previous nights, and not shown up again yet. He assumed that something in the building's structure prevented the low power signal from getting through, so as long as he couldn't track them he had to assume they were inside.

As a church tower in the distance chimed eleven his phone emitted a soft beep. One of the trackers had just reappeared and was moving towards him, although in a somewhat roundabout way. With a sigh he leaned back against the tree he had been standing under and resumed staring ahead at the stone looming in front of him. Although the sun had long set he could still make out letters etched into it by street lights bordering the pathway.

CAROLINE E. LYNCH 1946-1977

ARTHUR LYNCH 1943-1978

IN LOVING MEMORY

THEIR DAUGHTER ROSIANNA

"Sorry I'm late." The voice was low, but after only birds and crickets keeping him company, it startled the agent slightly.

Brandt almost didn't see her, dressed all in black, the hood of her sweater drawn over her head, and staying out of the circle of light cast by the nearby street lamp. "It's okay," he said, closing the gap between them with a step and put an arm around her. "Not how I imagined meeting your folks," he commented and when there wasn't a reply, he asked: "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Elaine said, leaning in closer. They exchanged a quick but intense kiss and as she looked up her hood fell off, revealing the short, brush-like hair underneath. Brandt softly ran a hand through it and short tips stuck to his fingers like after a fresh cut. "What happened to your hair?"

"Long story," Elaine muttered, leaning into his shoulder.

"Do I want to know?" Brandt inquired.

"No," Elaine decided a little too quickly and earned a concerned glance from the other agent. She smiled dryly and gave him another quick kiss on his jawline. "Don't worry, I'm fine."

For a moment they just enjoyed the close contact. Elaine wasn't in a hurry, or she would have gone straight to business.

"So, Rosianna,..." Brandt finally said, nodding at the headstone.

"That was a long time ago," Elaine replied, and silence fell again, although she didn't seem apprehensive of the question. Then she chuckled. "I don't even know who put that there, I wasn't even three at the time."

Brandt didn't pursue the question further, he knew most of it already anyway. They stood a moment longer in silence until Elaine sighed and got back to business matters: "Ford told you what happened?"

"Mostly, yes," Brandt replied. "But what's the deal with him?"

"He was involved with a mission in Sydney last year," Elaine explained. "At least that's what Skye told me. His dead brother was an agent."

"Hanaway," Brandt nodded. He recalled the mission, he had signed off on it himself. Now that he had the connection, the resemblance was obvious. He had never met Trevor Hanaway, but he knew how much he had been involved in the events that had led up to Ghost Protocol and could only imagine how weird it had been for Jane and Benji to work with his twin brother. "So the Pink Rose are mainly just going around randomly drugging guys with roofies?"

"Not anymore," Elaine sighed. "Now they want me to build them a bomb."

"A bomb?" Brandt asked disbelievingly. "When did that happen?"

"Just after we came back from the precinct. I think they trust me now, that's why they told me," she explained. "Some senators visiting, who are radically anti-abortion and they want to blow up their cars as a sign of protest. But that's not even the concerning part. This is supposed to go down in a week and they don't even have my supply list yet. The stuff I'm going to need is hard to come by, even when you're not lying low, but from what they have managed to get me so far, somehow I don't doubt they'll have everything ready for me by tomorrow evening."

"So they have a good supplier," Brandt put in.

Elaine shook her head. "Even if, they're a relatively small group and as far as I can tell they have nothing of real value to exchange. It's unlikely that anyone with that kind of supplies would just give it away to a group of small time idealists, especially since it would include committing a whole list of criminal offenses regarding regulated substances and there's not even a good chance that what they're doing will have any kind of lasting impact," she explained. "No, I think there's something more going on here."

"Sounds like we should try to find the supplier," Brandt put in.

"Yeah," Elaine agreed and reluctantly stepped away from him. "Pamela is in charge of supplies. I don't know her last name, but she's associated with the shelter, so you should be able to find her through that."

"Alright, I'll look into it," Brandt promised. "How will we keep in contact?"

"If something urgent comes up, we'll figure out a way," Elaine replied. "But I'm not sure we can get out again before the protests. They've been watching us tightly so far."

Brandt nodded unhappily, he would have much preferred some kind of regular contact. "I'll keep an eye out for you."

They stood across each other in silence for a moment, then Elaine sighed. "I better get going before someone notices I'm gone."

Brandt enveloped her into a last quick hug. "Take care," he whispered with a kiss on her forehead.

"I will," she promised. The she pulled the hood of her sweater back over her face and disappeared into the shadows.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter seven**

The convoy was progressing at a very slow pace, walled in by a crowd of mostly women that were loudly chanting "Our body, our choice!" and holding up posters advocating for their rights. The protesters were separated from the black sedans by a two strong line of police in riot gear who were trying to force back the crowd. The women were unimpressed, pelting the policemen and cars with missiles made of diapers filled with chocolate pudding. Even as more police streamed in through from the sides they stood their ground and refused to give.

Further back in the crowd, Elaine was crouching on the ground, ringed by Skye, Phoebe and Lorena who were keeping her from being accidentally trampled, while she was slowly dissolving the rubber sealing on a manhole cover that had been put in place precisely to prevent what she was about to do. Once the sealing was gone, she carefully pried the metal plate from the ground and set it aside. Then she took the two contraptions she had built from the backpack and fixed them to the inside of the manhole with tape.

When she was done, the agent replaced the cover and got up. Without a word, the women split up and merged into the crowd. They would move outward and disappear into side streets and once they were safely away, Phoebe would call Pamela at the front of the crowd to retreat. They would give way slowly as if being pushed back by the police force. And the car would reach the spot just in time.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Elaine was the last to enter the observation room that was connected with the interrogation room via a two-way mirror. She had been picked up by two somewhat overzealous police officers a few blocks from the protests. There had been little means of them coordinating with Brandt and Ford, so she hadn't known if it was planned or just by chance, and had spent half an hour in a holding cell, holding her bloody nose, before someone had come to let her out. One of the arresting officers had shoved her into a wall when he put the handcuffs on. He had apologized profusely when she was identified as an undercover agent and seemed so embarrassed she hadn't even got the satisfaction of shouting at him.

Skye had obviously fared better and was already waiting with Brandt and the detective. At the desk of the interrogation room, Phoebe-Anne was sitting, staring at the mirrored glass that was impenetrable to her.

When Elaine entered, Brandt got up and walked over. "You okay?" he asked quietly while wrapping his arms around her in a careful hug.

"Yeah," she replied, momentarily resting her head on his shoulder. Then she felt the warm trickle of fresh blood running from her nose and quickly drew away. "Shit," she exclaimed when she saw the dark red stain she had left on his clothing.

Brandt undid his soiled tie, watching her with concern. "You sure?"

"Yeah, just a nosebleed," she replied in a nasal voice, pinching the tip of her nose to stop the bleeding. With her free hand she accepted the tie and once the trickle of blood had ceased again, attempted to clean herself up a little before she finally stuffed the bloodied garment into her pocket.

"So, what are you? Mr. and Mrs. Grumpycat?" Detective Ford asked from across the room where he had been watching. Brandt and Bray just gave him a frosty stare, so he turned to Skye: "Is it a thing in your agency that you have to be a couple?"

"Is it a thing in your job that you have to be an asshole?" the Dane answered and he shut up.

"So, what did I miss?" Elaine asked.

"Well, bomb squad found and successfully disabled your nice little IED," Ford explained.

Elaine nodded. "Good," she said, then suddenly looked up sharply. "Wait, singular? You mean you only found one?"

"I already told them we placed two, but only one was found," Skye replied. "Also our friend Lorena has conveniently disappeared."

"Well, it's not like it can do any damage," Ford put in. "At least that's what ABBA here said."

"I'm not Swedish either," Skye said, sounding offended.

Sawyer raised his eyebrows in what might actually have been an apologetic expression. "Whatever you say, sister."

"It probably won't blow up, yes," Elaine admitted darkly. "But it's still made of volatile materials and I don't want to think of what someone could do with that, who knows what they're doing. Or worse, someone who doesn't know what they're doing."

"Okay, then. Let's agree we need to find this stuff before anyone does something nasty," Ford agreed. "So what's the grand plan?"

"I guess it's safe to assume Lorena probably has the device," Brandt said drily, pretty much confirming that they had nothing.

"So what about her?" Elaine asked, nodding towards Phoebe in the interrogation room.

"Nothing," Brandt sighed. "Not one word. Plus all their background checks have come back very empty."

Elaine looked at Skye. "Maybe we should try?"

"You think it would help?" Holt asked, intrigued. The other woman replied with a shrug.

Brandt frowned at them. "It would effectively blow your cover."

"Well, worst-case scenario, there's someone out there with enough knowledge to make my little science fair project actually go boom, but leave the basic structure intact enough to make it look like it came from the same person as the one you pulled out of the gully. Maybe they could even copy the design. Chances are it would immediately be blamed on the Pink Rose and the actual bombers get away," Elaine said. "Best case scenario, whatever information we can get from her will help us to prevent exactly that, probably saving a few lives in the progress, potentially some high profile ones, too. And in any case, as long as she stays here, the damage is contained."

Brandt contemplated this a moment, then looked at Skye, who shrugged. "Might be worth the risk."

The analyst nodded. "Alright, give it a shot."

They stepped outside and in the corridor Skye turned to Elaine. "So how do you want to do it?" she asked. "I'm the good cop, you're the bad cop?"

"What?" the other woman just asked, but had already opened the door to the interrogation room, so there was no time for further discussions.

Inside the interrogation room, Skye sat herself down across from Phoebe-Anne while Elaine stayed back, leaning against the door frame, arms crossed. "Hello Phoebe," Holt said pleasantly, back in her American accent. "How are you doing?"

There was no reply from the prisoner, but her eyes were darting back and forth between the other two women.

"You know the bomb squad came up one short on the explosives we planted. And you know how dangerous these things can be," Skye continued. "We already know that Lorena has it, but I'm afraid we have misplaced her. Maybe you could help us with that?"

Phoebe blinked in confusion. She was very careful to not change her posture or facial expression, but the agents had caught the slight furrow of her brow that indicated she didn't know what Holt was talking about.

"Oh, wasn't that part of the plan?" Skye asked, and the other woman's expression confirmed it. "That would be even more reason for you to help us. Obviously she has an agenda of her own. She could kill innocent people, blame it on you and your organization. If you help us, we can prevent that. And we can even let you out of here."

Phoebe looked back from Skye to Elaine. She seemed on the verge of saying something, but then she decided differently and clamped up again.

"Alright, your choice," Skye said and got out of the chair. As she walked back to the door, Elaine slipped past her, clearly startling Phoebe as she had taken care to be out of the other woman's view as long as possible. She leaned over the table and got her face as close as possible, looking the prisoner right in the eyes.

"You should consider this offer well," she said quietly. "Right now you have been arrested in relation to a bomb-plot against a government official. That makes you a suspected terrorist and to our government suspected terrorists _are_ terrorists. This means we can do to you whatever we want to make you talk. And just so you know," Elaine nodded her head towards Skye at the door, without breaking eye contact, "she shot me in the face once. Right here," she pointed at the scar between her eyebrows, a slightly angled oval with two stitch marks. "Didn't even hesitate. And I'm her friend."

Behind the two-way mirror Detective Ford looked at Agent Brandt. "That didn't really happen. Right?" he asked.

Brandt sighed and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. "I wish."

Inside the interrogation room, Phoebe-Anne and Agent Bray were still staring at each other. The prisoner had her jaws clenched but not reacted otherwise. "I want my phone call," she finally said.

"In exchange for what?" Elaine asked.

Phoebe leaned back in her chair. "I want my phone call," she repeated with astonishing self-confidence.

"You know that can be arranged, but if we do that for you, you'll have to give us something," Elaine replied and sat down in the chair.

The prisoner was once again silent.

"I would like to help you," the agent said. "But you'll have to help me, too."

Phoebe stared at her stoically. It was clear they wouldn't get anything more out of her.

There was a knock on the door to the interrogation room and Brandt opened it a crack and waved them out. Skye and Elaine followed him back to the observation room.

"Well, that went swimmingly," Ford remarked sourly.

"At least she said something," Skye replied. "Which is more than you managed."

Before this could escalate, Brandt intervened. "I think we should give her the phone call," he said.

"When she hasn't given us anything?" Ford asked incredulously.

"She obviously isn't going to," Elaine put in. "Not in the near future. And not without some forceful coercion."

The detective looked at her even more disbelievingly. "Do you want to torture her?"

"No one is going to torture anyone," Brandt interjected quickly. "But if we let her have her phone call, we can listen in on the call and backtrack the other phone. And maybe if we're nice to her she'll actually talk to us."

Ford obviously wanted to retort something but apparently didn't have a better idea. "Alright, Mr. Moneypenny," he said. "But if this goes sideways it's on you."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter eight**

The phone rang twice. "Yes?" a female voice said, unidentifiable from the single word.

"I'm stuck," Phoebe replied.

The other person hung up.

In the observation room, everyone looked at Brandt who was on the phone with Yusuf. He had asked the IMF tech department to trace the call. Now he shook his head as he put his own phone away. "Burner phone," he said with a sigh. "And not enough time to locate."

"So that's a bust," Ford said darkly. He didn't even want to make a witty remark anymore. "What now?" he asked just as there was a knock on the door.

A police sergeant in uniform came in, clearly agitated. "Detective?" she said. "This just came in."

Ford looked at the papers she handed him and read them over twice, to make sure he really had read it right. "Thank you, sergeant," he finally said. "I'll handle this."

The officer looked like she wanted to object, but then thought twice and left. Once she was gone, Ford handed Brandt the paper.

"A release order?" Brandt said incredulously.

Ford nodded. "It looks legit," he said. "And from very high up. I'll have to let her go, or someone else will."

Brandt read the papers again, then handed them back to the detective. "Let her go," he decided.

"She's going to blow our cover..."

"I know, but we can't keep her here, so we'll just have to make sure it won't happen," the analyst said. "Skye, you follow her, discretely. Intercept her if you can and try to talk some sense into her. Elaine, you go straight back to the shelter."

"And me?" Ford asked as all three agents headed out.

"You stay put," Brandt ordered and was out of the door.

The detective looked after him. "The hell I'm gonna," he muttered.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Brandt gave Elaine a lift to a small empty side street a few blocks from the Pink Rose, where she could exit his car unseen. He had kept a look on Skye's tracker, and assuming Phoebe hadn't managed to shake her off, they were apparently still moving on foot, giving Elaine some time until they would reach the shelter.

Upon entering she immediately noticed how eerily empty the building was. She knew several of the other women who had been at the protest had subsequently been arrested, but she still had expected to find someone at the shelter. As it was she didn't encounter anyone on the entire ground floor. Feeling lucky, she decided to have a look into the office, but it was locked, so she decided to move on and come back once she had made sure there really wasn't anyone around who might surprise her breaking in.

She went down the stairs into the basement next. There was light on in the corridor, which was odd since it indicated there was someone there. As Elaine moved closer to the laboratory, she started noticing that the door was not quite closed. She went to the room they had been sleeping in first, carefully opened the door and gave the room a quick once over, but there was no trace anyone had been in there since they had left. Then she moved on to the laboratory.

Standing behind the door frame she carefully kicked the door open and peeked inside. She couldn't see much from that position so she carefully inched into the opening of the door. At this moment the hinges creaked just as the door came to a stop.

"Hold it right there!" Pamela shouted at her from across the room.

Elaine could hear the click as she loaded the gun. Slowly she raised her hands and took a step to the side, so she stood fully inside the door-frame.

"Where is Olivia?" the other woman asked, slowly making her way through in between the tables.

"Who?" Elaine asked.

"Phoebe," Pamela corrected herself. "Where is she?"

"I don't know," the agent replied truthfully. She took a step back, out of the lab, to give them both some more room and calmly added: "Be careful, that's acid."

"Don't move!" Pamela commanded although Elaine was already backed against the corridor wall. She had made it out of the small labyrinth of tables and now stood in the door herself. "Where is Phoebe?"

"LAPD! Don't move!" Unseen by Pamela, Ford had come into the corridor to Elaine's left and had his own gun trained on the other woman.

She gave him a quick once over, including the badge that prominently hung on his belt. "Homeland Security," Pamela countered, her gun still aimed at Elaine.

"CIA," Brandt said to Elaine's right. He didn't even have his own firearm raised, but held it at the ready pointing at the floor. "Do I win?"

"Hey, I was faster, East Coast," Ford put in, relaxing a little.

"You're not even supposed to be here," Brandt put in.

Pamela uncomfortably looked from one to the other. "Can you ID yourselves?"

"Yes," Brandt replied. With slow, controlled movements he unloaded his gun and put it clearly visible on the floor in front of him. "Can you?"

"I'm undercover," Pamela replied.

Brandt smiled. "I know," he said and reached inside his suit jacket. Instead of an ID, he pulled out his phone, dialled a number and put it on speaker.

"Yes?" a very disgruntled voice answered after three rings.

"Director Brassel," Brandt said and Pamela turned a shade paler.

"Brandt, do you have any idea what time it is?"

"I am calling your office," Brandt replied, almost adding 'sir' out of habit.

"Brandt, sometimes your ass is too smart for your own good," Brassel said. "What do you want?"

"The request I put in earlier..."

Brassel sighed. "Do you know how much paperwork this is?"

"Yes," Brandt replied. "But since the agent in question is standing next to me now, I think your word would suffice. And it is urgent."

"And which of my agents would that be?"

Brandt nodded at Pamela, who nervously took a step forward. "Heather Grey, sir," she said. "I'm working undercover on the Pink Rose case with Olivia Foster."

"Well, cooperate then," Brassel said, then the phone call ended with a click. Brandt pocketed his phone again.

"Can I take my hands down now?" Elaine asked into the silence that followed and when no one objected, she did.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Skye followed Phoebe-Anne outside the police station and down the road. They were taking a slightly roundabout way, but still headed towards the Pink Rose, as they had expected. Two blocks from the station, Phoebe pulled out the phone the officers had had to give back to her and apparently called someone. The agent couldn't hear what was spoken and she didn't dare to go closer for fear of being discovered. It was too bad, they hadn't had the means to bug the cell, or they might be able to learn something useful now, but it wouldn't do anything to ponder about that now.

Phoebe crossed the street and Skye almost lost her, as the traffic light switched to red before she could get there, but she had seen the other woman turn into a dark side street that was a short cut back to the Pink Rose shelter. She knew there was no way to get out of the alleyway in between, and anyway they seemed to be headed back to the women's house, but she also didn't want to let the distance get too far, so at the first gap in the traffic she crossed.

Down the alleyway she picked up her speed to close the distance between them. She couldn't even see the other woman up ahead, the sun had gone down by now and the small side street was barely lit, so she started to fear she had lost her target, when something hit her over the head from behind and she landed face first on the floor. Before she could get her bearings, there was another hit and she blacked out.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter nine**

"Let's start with what you're doing here," Brandt asked the woman they had formerly known as Pamela, but had now identified herself as Agent Heather Grey from Homeland Security.

"I'm undercover in the Pink Rose," she started.

"We figured," Ford replied drily and received annoyed looks from all three of the others.

Grey ignored him and looked at Bray and Brandt. "I'm assuming you're doing the same," she said drily. "I'm sorry, up until a moment ago I thought you were actually one of the Jenkins Sisters and he a crooked cop."

"Excuse me?" Ford said flustered.

"You built them a bomb," Grey pointed out.

"Which couldn't blow up," Elaine replied. "Also you supplied me with the materials to do so."

Grey's eyes narrowed. "I did not."

"Then who...?"

"Excuse me," Brandt interjected. "Can we maybe get back to why you were infiltrating a militant women's rights organization?"

"We were hoping that through them we could get into the bigger drug rings," Grey continued. "We thought that they or the Jenkins Sisters might have connections to Chester Mansfield and Yvonne Vasquez."

"That's impossible," Elaine muttered, although more to herself, thoughtfully staring at the floor while she was leaning against the wall.

"Care to enlighten us?" Ford asked and Elaine looked up as if she only then remembered that they were there.

"They're both dead," she said flat out.

Grey stared at her, then at Brandt. "And you're sure of that?"

Elaine smiled thinly. "I took over for Vasquez with The Horsemen after she blew up her own lab," she said, then her expression sobered. "And I saw the aftermath of what happened to Chester."

"I'm sorry, what do horses have to do with this?" Ford asked, clearly lost.

"The Four Horsemen, named after the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse. Only one of the most notorious drug syndicates of the 90s," Agent Grey lectured him, looking at Elaine with a mixture of admiration and horror.

Bray meanwhile had resumed her thinking stance. "Will, you remember in January, the scarfaced woman who gave us all the grief about Morpheus?" she asked. "Can you draw her like twenty years younger and without all the scars?"

"I'll try," he said, fishing a pen out of his inner jacket pocket. Borrowing Ford's notebook he started to make a crude sketch.

"That's her!" Grey said with amazement, once the sketch started to show recognizable features.

"Yes," Elaine said with a dark sigh. "That sneaky bitch."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Skye woke up with a pounding headache, sitting on hard concrete floor. She was taped with rounds of duct tape to square pillar, leaving her in an almost upright position, her hands sticking out at the lower edge next to her thighs. Another generous strip of tape was stuck over her mouth.

She looked around. The room she was in seemed to be large with concrete everything, an old garage or warehouse maybe. She could hear someone moving behind her, and across from her, about three or four meters away, Maria was stuck to another pillar in much the same fashion. The girl was looking at her with huge, terrified eyes, a large bruise was covering the side of her face and there was what looked like dried blood stuck to her hair.

"This is not what I asked for!" a sharp voice with a British accent bellowed. Skye turned her head to see where it was coming from, but all she could make out was a lit doorway off to the side.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know," another voice replied, sobbing. After a moment Skye identified the second speaker as Lorena.

"I don't care," the first voice said with an impatient sigh. "You said you would deliver the Jenkins Sisters to me in return for your own little brat. Now where are they?"

"You got one of them," Lorena stammered. "Please, just let her go!"

"Are you kidding me?" The British woman sounded as if she was about to lose her patience. "That is not Simone Jenkins. And even if she were, that's the wrong sister."

"I'm sorry. I really didn't know," Lorena pleaded again. "I thought they'd be together. Please, I didn't know. Just let me try again."

"Pathetic, you got to do everything by yourself."

There was a sound of high heeled shoes clacking on concrete floor, receding into the distance. Then two tall, big men came into view dragging the screaming Lorena by the arms who was trying to free herself of their grab with little success. They carried her to the spot behind Maria and while one of them held her down, the other taped her to the pillar.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"So, assuming it's her, what does Vasquez want with my partner?" Grey asked into the round.

"Your partner?" Brandt asked.

"Agent Foster," Grey replied, and for Elaine's benefit added: "You know her as Phoebe. She called me after I got her released from police custody, but the call broke off, so I assumed whoever is messing with us here got her. That is, I thought it was you, but since that's not the case..."

Brandt cursed. "Skye hasn't checked in yet, so probably they got her, too."

"My partner," Elaine answered Grey's questioning look. "Simone. But I'm pretty sure it's not them they want. It's me. Well, Andrea Jenkins, but that doesn't make much of a difference right now."

"Wasn't she after Morpheus last time we saw her?" Brandt put in.

"I'm sorry, who's Morpheus?" Grey asked.

Brandt smiled thinly. "That's a very good question."

Elaine shrugged. "Either she's given up on that, or she's trying to get a footing back, considering we put quite a dent in her business earlier this year," she assumed. "Or maybe she thinks the sisters know something. Either way, right now we have to get our people out and I have a really good idea of how we're going to do that. But for that we need to know where she is."

"Well, Skye's tracker is still on," Brandt pointed out, showing her his phone screen with one little dot unmoving in the middle of a map. "So what do you want to do?"

"Make her an offer she can't refuse," Elaine said and pushed herself off the wall she had been leaning on.

"And what are you going to offer her?" Grey called after her, as they followed her down the corridor.

Elaine smiled grimly. "Me."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter ten**

"Hello."

The two men stared at her as if she was an alien. They were big and burly, almost comically so, but obviously not the brightest lights on the chandelier. Or doped out of their minds. It was typical for Yvonne Vasquez' choice of henchmen. She liked to be the most intelligent person in the room and felt threatened by anything that had more brains than muscles.

Elaine gave them a wave and a pleasant smile. "How are you doing?" she asked. "Boring night, isn't it?"

"You aren't allowed here," one finally said. "Go away."

"And if I don't?" she asked, leaning against the wall provocatively.

"Go away!" the man repeated more loudly and started towards her, his comrade closely behind.

If she had a partner, Elaine mused, it would have been easy for them to sneak in behind the two gorillas now. Sadly that wasn't the plan. "Make me," she said and took a step away from the wall, going into a ready stance.

The first guard lunged at her, obviously trying to grab her. It was easy for her to duck out of his reach before he could get a good hold, then she took him by one arm and, using his own forward momentum against him, brought him down like a sack of potatoes. The second one was even easier to sidestep and she was almost disappointed when tripping him over her foot and his unconscious colleague was enough to get him to his knees.

While the two started to untangle themselves from each other and the floor, she smiled down on them. "Take me to your leader."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Skye had nodded off for a bit – it was the middle of the night by now after all and they had all been up since early morning – when she was woken up by the sharp sound of heels on concrete floor. "This better be important," the British voice snapped behind her.

Blinking the sleep away, she looked around and from the other side of the room saw two of the ridiculously big guards approaching, flanking... Elaine? Skye almost didn't trust her eyes, but it was clearly Agent Bray, still wearing the somewhat grimy sweater and jeans from earlier. She was walking between the two men as if they were her bodyguards rather than her captors. The fresh bruising and the way they kept a respectful distance indicating she had had to beat some sense into them.

Elaine made quick eye-contact with Skye before she focused on the woman on the other end of the room. "Hello, Yvonne."

"Deary me, Rosy," Yvonne said and on a nod from her the two guards turned and disappeared back outside. "I almost didn't recognize you. But then, how long has it been? I think I haven't seen you since you tried to blow me up."

"Oh, get over yourself. If I had wanted to kill you, I would have. That you blew your face to pieces is entirely on you," Elaine replied. As she passed Skye she took her hands out of her pocket and almost unnoticeably a small package slipped out of her pocket, landing next to Skye's feet with a silent thud. "Also you're not the only one who's had a shitty life." Stepping closer, she showed her hands to Yvonne, still bearing the thin red scars, mementos of the torture she had endured at the hands of the other woman's henchmen.

"Ah, that was you, what a curious coincidence," Yvonne said and smiled. "Of course if I had known I was dealing with an old friend I would have treated you differently. But please let me not repeat my mistake, let's talk in my office about whatever it is that brought you here."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Elaine had aimed well and Skye was easily able to maneuver the package in reach of her hand with her foot. Once able to grab it, she found that it was a blue, slightly blood-stained tie, wrapped around the small knife Bray liked to carry everywhere. Careful not to make much noise, she started to cut through the tape that held her to the pillar. Once she had made it through the last layer, she managed to rip herself free.

While she removed the strip that was over her mouth, she stood up and had a quick look around. The big room was, as she had suspected, an empty garage. There were three truck-sized gates set into one wall, and a small door between two of them. And outside that door she suspected the two goons were standing guard. Probably more of them around the perimeter.

On the other side there was only one more door, the one that lead to Yvonne's office. Along one side, close to the office door, crates were stacked. Across from her Maria and Lorena were still taped to the pillar and behind her own pillar there was someone else tied up, but otherwise they were alone, there were no guards inside the garage. She allowed herself a thin smile, sometimes you just had to get lucky.

She walked over to Maria and Lorena and knelt down in a spot where both could see her, but so she was shadowed by the pillar if someone came out of the office. She put a warning finger on her lips, then in a low voice asked: "Are you hurt?"

Both women shook their heads.

"Okay," Skye continued. "I'll cut you free now. Go hide over there," she said, pointing to the shadowy corner next to the small doors between the garage gates. "And be ready to run."

She waited until both nodded their confirmation, then she cut first Lorena's then Maria's ties. While the sisters huddled together in the corner, she walked over to the last prisoner. Phoebe-Anne stared at her with a mixture of confusion and fear. Again she squatted down.

"I know this is confusing," she said, "but I'm on your side, and Andrea too. The important thing right now is to get out of here, okay?"

Phoebe nodded, but watched Skye closely as she cut through the tape. Once Phoebe was free, the agent went to inspect the crates, keeping to the shadows as she moved so she wouldn't be seen from the office. What she found looked like a lot of chemistry apparatus, some of which she was familiar with, and in one box marked with a big red DANGER sign, several flasks with chemicals. Looking through them she selected one marked highly flammable and unstopped it.

"What are you doing?" Phoebe asked quietly behind her and Skye looked back startled. She had assumed her to have joined Lorena and Maria.

"A diversion," the agent replied. She took out the tie and dipped it in the liquid, then she made a knot in one end, so it wouldn't slip into the flask too far. "You should go to the others, this might get messy."

In the half-light she thought she saw Phoebe smiling. "I can fight," she said, eyeing Skye's handiwork. There was a bit of doubt in her voice when she asked: "Molotov cocktail?"

Skye shrugged. "You got a better idea?"

"No," Phoebe admitted.

Meanwhile the agent had located one of the contraptions she had seen Elaine use to light a bunsen burner. On her third try, she managed to produce a spark that lit the fuse.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter eleven**

"So, how's your hunt for Morpheus going?" Elaine asked by way of polite small talk. The office Yvonne had brought her into might once have been an office for the trucking company the garage had belonged to, but now every available surface was decked out in flasks with chemicals and scientific glassware. At first glance it might have looked chaotic, but she soon figured out the different production lines Yvonne had set up here.

"Oh, I've had to put that on the back-burner since your people so rudely interrupted me," Yvonne said, looking her over. "You know, Nestor told me you were playing on the opposite team now. I have to admit I was a little surprised, I always thought you a bit too naive for that. You know, I might even work with you. I'm assuming that's what you came here for?"

Elaine smiled back pleasantly. "Something like that," she said. "But I'm intrigued, why do you want to catch this Morpheus so badly?"

"Oh, you don't know who Morpheus is," Yvonne said and shook her head sadly, but with a winning smile. "And there I thought you had some intelligence in you after all. Morpheus was Chester's lackey, his favorite pet if you want. Sorry to break it to you."

Elaine could hardly believe that it worked. After all her only objective was to buy time and she was just hoping to harvest some information in the process, but obviously Yvonne thought she was at her mercy. "But he's a snitch," she said. "Also Chester is dead, so what you want with him?"

Yvonne laughed. "He never gave away much, just little snippets, Chester's way of keeping us on our toes, I guess," she said. "And as our dear departed leader's closest ally he is the last one who knows all the secrets."

"Secrets?"

"The stash," Yvonne said and rolled her eyes. "The money. Whatever else do you think anyone could be after?"

"And what makes you think he's still alive?"

"Oh come on, he conveniently disappeared after Chester's untimely demise," she said. "Probably ran back to his fed friends, if you ask me, sitting snug somewhere with a new identity. But I'll run him down eventually, took me almost twenty years..."

She cut off when something flew over their heads and crashed into the wall behind Yvonne, raining fire everywhere. "Help!" she screeched and a few of her guards tried to come to her aid from the back door, but were kept off by a wall of flame.

Furiously she lunged at Elaine, grabbing a flask from a nearby desk and smashing it on the edge of the same. She was quicker than the agent had expected and cut off her access to the door, trapping her between the wall and the roaring inferno. Emboldened by Elaine's apparent helplessness, Yvonne slashed out and caught her on the arm. The sharp edge of the glass ripped through the sleeve of her sweater and into skin.

Desperate, Elaine reached for her wrist and tried to pull her in, but in the confined space the other woman could use her greater height to full advantage and easily wrangled her down. "You know, it's a shame," Yvonne said, breathing hard, "but you just proved too much trouble for what you're worth." Elaine still had her wrist trapped in her hand and her other arm bent away, but the glass shard was moving uncomfortably close to her neck and Yvonne was now putting her whole weight onto that one hand. She wouldn't be able to hold it off for long. And then the glass clattered to the floor and Yvonne collapsed into a gurgling heap, the short handle of Elaine's small silver knife protruding from the side of her neck, just underneath her jaw and Skye standing over her.

Holt helped her fellow agent haul aside the body, but Elaine had her gaze fixed firmly on the quickly spreading fire. Roughly she shoved Skye to the door and for the benefit of anyone who might still be in the garage she shouted: "DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!" Then she dove at the floor as a jet of flame shot from the door.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Agent Heather Grey was anxiously waiting in the darkness. She, Agent Brandt and Detective Ford had donned bulletproof vests and assault rifles, and the detective had somehow managed to organize a SWAT team despite the late hour which was now spread out around the compound they were watching. They had counted two guards posted at each entrance and several more doing rounds around the building, but although they couldn't quite make out what they might be armed with despite night vision scopes, the leader of the SWAT team had assured her they would most likely be able to overpower them easily.

Still, they were waiting, and she wasn't even sure what for. For the signal, Brandt had said, but not been able to specify more closely what he meant by that. By now it had been several minutes since Agent Bray had gone in and the guards had come back out, but there seemed to be no sign of any kind.

She was about to ask Brandt, who had sort of taken over command of the team, how long they were supposed to be waiting when there was a sharp but not overly loud explosive sound and a bright flash from the windows at one side.

"Is that part of the plan?" Ford asked, but was ignored.

"Call the fire brigade," Brandt ordered, then gave the leader of the SWAT team the signal to move in.

Shouts of "Police!", "Don't move!" and "Show me your hands!" were heard around the building as the SWAT team moved in. The goons patrolling the perimeter were subdued quite easily as most were dazed by the fire now consuming one side of the building, and didn't seem to know what to do about it.

Heather stormed in on the other side, scared of what she might find her, and was greeted by darkness, relative to the well-lit situation the raging flames had produced outside. She switched on her flashlight, but it only illuminated empty floor. "Olivia?" she shouted.

"Over here," came a reply from a nearby corner and when she swung around she found her partner next to Lorena and Maria, the two sisters huddled against the wall and regarding her with fear-filled eyes.

"It's alright," she assured them. "Get out, now."

Behind her Brandt and Ford had entered the building and she could see two figures gingerly walking away from the fire that was visible through the office door, but thankfully couldn't spread over the bare concrete. As they came closer she identified the two IMF agents.

"Where is Vasquez?" she asked when they were within earshot.

Elaine wordlessly pointed one thumb over her shoulder at the raging blaze.

"Well, at least that's that taken care of," Ford commented.

"You alright?" Brandt asked.

Elaine nodded and when he didn't look convinced gave him a reassuring smile. Drily she added: "I need a drink."

Outside the SWAT team had already finished and once Elaine was sure they had a quiet spot, she lightly tapped Holt on the shoulder. "Skye T.?"

Skye turned around. "Yes?"

"Thanks," Elaine said and then on impulse stepped forward and gave her a hug.

Skye smiled and returned the embrace. "No, thank you."


	12. Chapter 12

**Epilogue**

Brandt organized them food, clean clothes and a flight back in no time. By the time they reached cruising altitude, they were well fed and slightly drowsy from the day of hard work. Brandt had excused himself to the forward cabin to check in with HQ and returned a few minutes later, looking quite sombre.

He sat down heavily across from the other two agents and didn't make eye-contact while Elaine and Skye looked at him expectantly. "You'd probably like to know that Ethan, Benji and Luther have once again saved the world from nuclear Armageddon," he stated drily, and quickly added: "Don't worry, they're fine. Well, Ethan is quite beat up, but it seems nothing too serious."

"And?" Elaine asked softly.

Brandt sighed, but he'd have to tell them eventually, so it wouldn't do to hold back now. "Hunley's dead," he said, his own voice feeling thin and toneless in his mouth. "Five days ago, in London. We'll be back just in time for the funeral."

Wordlessly he slid a phone across to Skye who took it and excused herself to the forward compartment. Brandt had purposefully not told them any of the details, after all what was the point? He still didn't know anything beyond the bare minimum the analyst in charge had decided to divulge over the phone and he already didn't want to know more.

He knew there was a report waiting for him that he wasn't particularly looking forward to read. And his workload had effectively just tripled. Plus dealing with whatever the hell the oversight committee would decide to do with this situation. He just didn't feel like he could deal with something like the aftermath of Ghost Protocol all over again.

And then he stopped himself for his selfish thinking when a man was dead, who he might even have considered a friend. He wondered if Hunley had had any family and if so what he was going to tell them, and so the cycle of thoughts began anew.

With a sigh he let his head fall onto the desk. Elaine had crept up beside him, softly massaging his neck with one hand. He wished he could just stay there. Or better yet, go back ten minutes, forget what he knew now and ride out the elation of a successfully finished mission. Maybe even get some sleep while he still could and let all this wait until they landed in the morning.

Just then his phone buzzed with an incoming message. Apparently it couldn't wait.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

When Skye activated the IMF issue phone with her fingerprint, it automatically downloaded her profile and set everything to her preferences. She immediately saw she had a few missed messages, which wasn't unusual when being off the grid for a few weeks, but they could wait. With motions so practised she probably could have done them blind, she opened the phone book, scrolled to B and pressed dial.

It only rung once before a familiar voice answered: "Hey."

"Hey," she replied. "How are you doing?"

"I don't know," Benji answered after a moment. He sounded tired. "Where are you?"

"About 35.000 feet over California. Although we might be in Arizona by now," she added thoughtfully. "We'll be landing in about five hours."

"I'll pick you up," he said.

"Okay," Skye replied. Then: "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

There was a dry chuckle. "I think I'm still on..." He hesitated. "To be honest I've lost track of time zones. What about you? Isn't it like middle of the night?"

"I can't sleep yet," Skye answered. "We only just wrapped things up here. Brandt got us straight in the air after we were done."

She could almost see his thoughtful nod. "How was it?"

"Long. Boring for the most part," Skye replied not un-truthfully. She knew he was probably just asking out of courtesy.

A long silence followed. It felt weird. She hadn't even fully realized how much she had missed Benji, yet he felt even farther away now she was talking to him. She couldn't wait until they landed and she could give him a hug.

"Hey, feather?" he finally asked.

"Yeah?"

"Did you listen to my messages?"

"Not yet," she admitted.

"Then don't," Benji said. He took a deep breath. "I was … in a bad spot."

"Okay," Skye said softly. She knew the kind of messages, the I-don't-know-if-I'll-come-back-but-I-love-you-very-much-type. He had made it back alright, so there was no need to go through them. She'd just delete them later.

"Hey, Skye?"

"Yeah?"

"What's your favourite dinosaur?"

Skye sat down and smiled. It was so Benji to just ask random questions. It was his way of saying he wanted to talk, but please not about work. "I don't know," she replied. "I've never thought about it."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

The funeral was attended mostly by suits. Actually Brandt hadn't seen anyone but the priest who was not in a suit, even Elaine had exchanged her comfortable sweater for the occasion. Still the crowd was clearly divided to his trained eye: the front where he was standing in his official persona as state analyst was made up of anyone of anyone with rank and name, mostly politicians in expensive looking attire with appropriately grave faces, more to the side the various directors of other agencies in garments that were actually tailored but less obviously so. Behind them were a cluster of CIA agents, after all Hunley had been first an agent there and then their director for years and obviously still had had many friends in the agency. IMF agents were scattered more unobtrusively in small groups around the perimeter of the crowd. He knew Elaine, Skye, Benji, Luther and Ethan were standing off to his left, but it seemed like anyone who had managed to get away from HQ had come.

Brandt calmly endured the ceremony all the while itching to get away. Of course he wanted to pay his respects, but his agent instincts urged him to blend into the crowd instead of standing front and centre like he did now. But that was a luxury he didn't have any more.

Once the rites were over and he deemed he had been around for a socially acceptable time, he slowly made his way to the edge of the crowd and then faster to the entrance of the cemetery. But before he made it there, someone called him: "Agent Brandt?"

Brandt turned around and breathed a sigh of relief. "Director Brassel," he replied without breaking his stride.

"That was a good piece of work in L.A. last night," Brassel remarked as he caught up to Brandt.

Brandt smiled. "Your agents did a good job," he said. Of course officially the credit went entirely to Homeland and the LAPD.

"So, when can I call you secretary?" Brassel asked. He wasn't one to talk around the matter at hand.

Brandt snorted. "Over my dead body."

"You know, you're the best person for the job," the Director of Homeland Security replied. "Your agents need someone they know they can trust, someone who's come up through the ranks and someone who knows how to deal with the politics."

"Like you?" Brandt asked.

"Hell no," Brassel replied. "I've had my share of that pie.

The analyst smiled, knowing he had just won the argument. "Good day, Director Brassel."

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Brandt had started to bring some sort of order into the paperwork on his desk when there was a knock on his door. His analysts had done good work handling anything that could do without him on their own, but there was still enough that needed his personal authorisation – or that of the secretary, but he wasn't about to let things get bogged down by technicalities. Also his chief of security had insisted on posting someone in front of the door – for security reasons, she had said, but actually to screen anyone who wanted to come in and send away anything that could wait until later. Which meant that if someone had made it close enough to the door to knock, it had to be important.

"Yes?" he said and stood up in surprise. "Director."

"Agent Brandt," Erica Sloane replied, closing the door behind her. "I want to say I have considered Alan Hunley a friend and I know he held you in high regards as well. You should know I feel partially responsible for what has happened."

"We all do," Brandt replied darkly. He looked her over out of habit. She was wearing the same clothes he had seen her in earlier at the funeral, but a document bag was slung over her shoulder she had not been carrying then. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Black, two sugars," she replied and took a seat. "I hope your agents are alright?"

"They are," he replied guardedly, pouring their coffee. He moved aside some papers from his desk, before he set down the cups, then he sat down across from her.

Sloane took hers with a thankful nod. "I was hoping you might be up for the secretary position."

Brandt grimaced. "Have you been talking to Director Brassel by any chance?"

"In fact I have. And I agree with him," the Director of the CIA replied. "If you took the Secretary's chair it would be the best for everyone involved, and I know the committee has already offered."

Brandt suppressed a sigh. "And I have already rejected it," he replied. It was not that he disagreed with her, actually he knew it probably would be the best for the IMF to have him as secretary, but the fact of the matter was he didn't want to. He was tired of conversations like this that consisted mainly of pleasantries, and of the politics that felt like a constant game of chess, only everyone was trying to alter the rules in their favour. He wanted to go back to being a field agent, in fact he had been reviewing candidates for the Chief Analyst position with Hunley before his most recent mission. They had wanted to make a decision once he was back, but that obviously wasn't going to happen any more.

But he wasn't about to tell Sloane that, instead he said: "Ma'am, I've been driving shotgun to the last two secretaries. I've damn near done the job without the official title in between. I think I am the most qualified person to decline it." His eyes darted back to the document back that now sat on her lap. "But I'm assuming you're not here to talk me into it? Because if so, I'm afraid you're wasting your time."

"No," Sloane admitted. "Can we talk openly?"

Suddenly it seemed like Brandt's day was about to get significantly more interesting. It was an open secret that most heads of the diverse federal agencies were often listened in on by their agents – for 'security reasons'. But usually this was accepted as a necessary measure unless discussing the most sensitive information.

Brandt knew that his own office was free of bugs, since he had checked it himself this morning as a matter of habit, but to humour Sloane, he placed his phone on the desk and activated a jamming signal that would render any listening devices in the vicinity useless. "Go ahead," he said.

"After the conference in January, Alan had asked me to have a look into the archives for anything codenamed Morpheus. I didn't find any solid material until very recently and considering it seemed important at the time, I thought you might be interested," she said and pulled out a folder which she set in the middle of the desk. It looked old, and had the crest of both the CIA and the IMF printed on it, meaning it was from when the IMF used to be a sub-division of the CIA, back before the early 2000s.

Brandt reached for it, but the CIA director put a hand on it and looked at him sternly. "Now, before you open this, you should know that this was very hard to acquire," she said. "This, as far as I know, is the only copy. And it has never been digitalized. Plus I found it in a section of the archives that technically not even I should have had access to."

"I understand," Brandt replied. Whatever was in this folder, someone had tried to bury it, deep. And they had almost succeeded.

Sloane nodded and pushed it over.

When Brandt opened, to his surprise, he looked at an agent's profile. An IMF agents profile, with DISAVOWED stamped across it in big red letters. The agent had been a young man named Lucas Blake, dark haired, looking at the camera with a charming smile. He reminded Brandt a little of Ethan, only Hunt had probably still been a schoolboy when that picture was taken.

"It's part of our not so glorious history that in the 60s and 70s the CIA was involved in drug trafficking operations that it was originally tasked to prevent. When it came to light that several agents involved in this were also generously lining their own pockets in the process, the upper management finally decided something had to be done, creating Project Morpheus," Director Sloane explained.

"Basically we loaned one of your agents to go under cover and root out any agents with more than professional relationships to the drug cartels from the other side," she continued. "The project went well for a few years, until in '94 Blake suddenly disappeared. It was assumed that he had gotten involved in some gang rivalries and probably been killed in an altercation with a rivalling group."

Brandt looked at the dates below: MIA in June of 1994, presumed killed and subsequently disavowed thereafter. "And then the contact who named himself Morpheus showed up in Fall..." he said thoughtfully.

"It would suggest there might be a connection," Sloane agreed. "Whatever the case, I'll leave the matter to you, for now."

"Thank you," Brandt nodded and closed the file. "I can trust that this stays between us?"

"Of course," Director Sloane replied and stood up. "Good day, Agent Brandt. Don't bother, I'll find my way out," she added when he also made to get up.

"Good day, Director Sloane," Brandt said. Once she was gone and the door closed behind her, he used his hand-print to open the secret drawer under his desk that only ever could be opened in this way and stored the file there. After what had happened in L.A. he had a feeling he might have need of it soon.

* * *

_We're at an ending once again. Thanks everyone for reading and for the lovely reviews! I hope I'll be back with more soon._


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